Purgatory

Most of the time, I'm very happy with my transcription job. I get flexible hours, it's close to home (sometimes I even get to work from home), and although I wish I was getting paid more, I'm not starving to death on my salary. There are the occasional inaudible meetings that get me frustrated, but then again, there are all sorts of interesting things I learn about when I'm transcribing meetings with doctors who are trying to cure cancer, meetings with bankers trying to make more money, interviews with crack and heroine addicts on the streets, and auto insurance claims. And between the oncologists and the crackheads, I have added a plethora of new words to my vocabulary.

But sometimes there are some seriously tedious jobs, and I happen to be taking a quick break from one of them right now. Sometimes we get medical or technical writers who have to interview an expert (doctor, computer guy, whatever) in order to write a white paper or a research grant, and they have to ask some pretty stupid questions if they want the whole story. I have a new respect for interviewers now, because it's a tough job, and if you're bad at making somebody open up, you're screwed. This guy I'm doing right now is actually a pretty good interviewer, but the subject matter (which is confidential, of course), is about the most BORING thing ever. I'm literally falling asleep while typing. Do you know how embarrassing it is to wake up to find that you've misspelled almost an entire paragraph?

It doesn't help that the sound quality is poor and they've got the window open, so I can hear the traffic and the wind and the occasional siren better than I can hear the interviewee. But I'm thinking that even if the sound quality were better, I still would fall asleep. It's obvious he's interested in this topic, but I can't see why. Typing this job reminds me of the reason why I was never any good in chemistry in high school: it was right after lunch, the teacher had a very slow, quiet voice, and he'd always turn the lights off and show us slides.

The sad thing is, I think there are three more hours left to transcribe...wake me up when I'm done.